With a mere 2/3s of the teams remaining, the chaff having been sorted from the slightly worse chaff, it's knockouts time. The first Round of 16 games are on Saturday with Wales/Denmark and Italy/Austria kicking us off and then we've got four days of that culminating in, er, Sweden / Ukraine? I jest, I think that could actually be fun.
Here are the fixtures, and here's the bracket:
Overall poll at the top but let's do some thoughts and predictions now we've all had the benefit of a head start:
PREDICTIONS
Semi-finalists will be....
Winner will be...
Will anybody overtake Cristiano Penalto for golden boot?
MID-TOURNAMENT REPORT CARD
My team:
How I thought we'd do:
How I think we'll do (if still in it)
Our player of the tournament so far:
Our worst player so far:
Overall comments:
GENERAL
Having now seen the groups, I would keep/change the 24 team format:
My favourite other team so far has been...
My breakout player of the tournament is...
Gives us something to talk about in the two dead days, innit.